SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) **** My favorite professor at LSU, Dr. Cecil Eubanks of the Poli Sci department, warned us all that he was going to show footage from the Nazi concentration camps, and asked us all to make a special effort to show up. Everyone did, and I don't believe that anyone regretted it. No one enjoyed it. One girl threw up and several people were openly weeping. So I managed not to watch this for a number of years-always knowing that eventually I would-because I knew that this is the story of how those people got into those pictures. As a film it's nearly as brilliant as it is important, and its importance is tantamount given that there are a lot of people who weren't in Dr. Eubanks' class. Steven Spielberg puts it all together, and allows it unfold, with a touch that should have silenced forever anyone questioning his talents. There is a horrible, insane elegance and dignity to someone somewhere in nearly every scene, and he generally does an excellent job of reigning in his most melodramatic impulses. Finally he has a story that he feels little need to embellish. He tells the story of the Jews as counterpart to the personal trajectory of Oskar Schindler, with Schindler's slow but dramatic personal metamorphosis the balancing point between last hope and hopelessness. You probably noticed, but everyone involved in this did an incredible job. Film students and industry pros may watch this enough times to disassociate the material from the approach. I've seen it once, and I have no intention of ever seeing it again.
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